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Introduction

This is a song of strange and haunting beauty. It is a fittingly atmospheric introduction to the second half of Schlegel's Abendröte where twilight has given way to night. It was this section of the poetic cycle which first inspired the composer to music, and from the listener's point of view it seems to be the most personal poem among the Abendröte songs in that Schubert himself seems to have identified with the text. In his younger years he was susceptible (as indeed are most German speakers) to aphorism and homily, both as reader and writer, and this poem seems to have chimed with his mood; indeed 'Steige mutig, singe heiter' ('I climb boldly, singing merrily'), which seems custom-made to describe his unremitting industry and no-nonsense attitude to work, reads like an entry from his 1816 diary. But other images in the text also seem appropriate to his life. He follows the 'old tracks', firmly grounded in the tradition of Mozart and Beethoven; but he is also determined to carve out a separate path from his great predecessors, 'moving on and going forth to other places'. He also needs to leave home, and his succession of lodgings over the years perhaps betokens an unwillingness to settle down. And the motto 'I see all things clearly in their gentle reflection' is apt for a composer of Schubert's sensibility - it is something that John Keats might have said as he wrote the poems which are contemporary with this song. It is above all the last phrase, 'Froh umgeben, doch alleine' ('There is joy all around, yet I am alone'), which has utterly Schubertian resonances. Even the most devoted lover of this composer's music can have little idea of the solitary nature of creativity on this scale. Schubert's towering achievements (and they could already be thus described in 1819) were unrecognised by even his closest friends. But loneliness is not only to do with a lack of profound appreciation. To write as much music as Schubert required an iron discipline, and thousands of hours of lonely manual labour; this alone meant less time with other human beings than an essentially gregarious man might find congenial. Nor was hard work of this kind the only reason for this loneliness. Every morning as he sat down at his work desk, Schubert entered regions where no one else could follow him. And when he returned from those uncharted territories of mind and imagination, there was no one with whom he could share the experience: the language of this unknown country was spoken by him alone. Some of his friends saw him at work and found him 'transfigured' by the heat of inspiration; he was 'somewhere else' at the time. To live and work in a land inaccessible to one's friends and contemporaries is both blessing and curse, and Schlegel's poem captures not only that dichotomy but also the essentially Schubertian desire to honour his musical forbears ('the old track') at the same time as finding new paths and solutions.

Schubert was always drawn to night pictures, and some of his greatest nocturnes were already behind him. We might be tempted to associate the composer's younger years with somewhat melodramatic evocations of dark mystery and foreboding (as in the Ossian setting Die Nacht for example, and Der Geistertanz) and his later years with more spiritual evening pictures (such as Im Freien, Nachthelle); but both genres of night-piece co-exist throughout his oeuvre. He was capable of writing lucid and transparent tributes to moonlight from early on, and some of the most beautiful (Die Sommernacht, Die frühen Gräber, An den Mond and Klage an den Mond) are songs from his teenage years. Der Wanderer is slightly later, but from its mood and texture it belongs to their number; it stands on the threshold between Schubert's youth and maturity.

The word 'deutlich' (`clearly') in the poem's opening phrase governs the mood of the work which is gently luminous throughout. The key is in D major like Der Pilgrim and the much later Der Kreuzzug, a clear sign that the composer felt that this traveller was on an important spiritual journey. Harmonic ambivalence sets in right at the beginning: the second crotchet in the accompaniment is a G sharp which makes the ear believe that the song is really in A major; when the vocal line begins it seems to be in the subdominant rather than the tonic. We never quite recover from this deliberate disorientating effect which lends a gentle plagal ambience to much of the song, as if it was floating unanchored in heavenly space. The use of the flattened sixth on 'schweren Tage', 'jeder Klage' and at the end on 'alleine' adds a twist of world-weariness and other-worldliness to what appears, at first glance, to be simple music. The moon is both inspiration and companion, a guiding light in the dark world. This is symbolised by the doubling of the voice and bass line, extensive even by Schubert's standards, and a technique he used when he wanted to underline the import of the words. The moon's aphoristic advice in inverted commas ('Folge treu dem alten Gleise') is given emphasis in this way, but the doubling serves also as a steadying guide-rail, enabling the singer to 'follow faithfully the old track'. At 'Fort zu andern sollst du wechseln' he progresses up a chromatic scale (more or less) and then picks his way down the stave in graduated steps of descending fourths; on these journeys through the wilds he is still gently shadowed and supported by the piano's left hand.

After the haunting cadence of 'jeder Klage' we are ushered into the second verse, for Schubert has somehow turned the poet's lines of irregular length, seemingly composer-unfriendly, into a flowing strophic song. We are almost unaware of the difficulties of the poem's shape, so smoothly and inevitably does one part progress to the next. The vocal line of the second part of the song is more or less the same as the first, but the accompaniment is another matter. Now it is the right hand which shadows the vocal line (under 'Ebb' und hohe Flut, tief im Mut, wandr' ich so im Dunkeln weiter') as if the guiding light were clearer still, streaming over the wanderer's right shoulder rather than his left. This doubling continues for only three bars. At 'Steige mutig, singe heiter' the voice, suddenly independent, finds itself undoubled for the first time, although not unaccompanied. The dotted-rhythm chords accompanying 'singe heiter' briefly establish a new concerted tone of resolve between voice and piano. 'Alles reine seh' ich mild im Widerscheine' ends with one of the most touching of Schubertian cadences, a crucial difference from the corresponding passage in the first verse. For a moment we can imagine the composer himself singing these words, transfigured, as his friends described, by a glimpse of beauty beyond the comprehension of lesser mortals like ourselves. An inner voice in the accompaniment doubles the last phrase, emblematic of the inner understanding which changes the blurred and confusing into something lucid and clear. A hushed cadence with plagal—and thus almost religious—overtones, ends one of the few songs in Schubert's canon which rank as both a personal and an artistic credo. (Some others are An die Musik, Trost im Liede, and Des Sängers Habe.)

Recordings

Florian Boesch and Roger Vignoles were shortlisted for a BBC Music Magazine award for their first Hyperion album, ‘Loewe Songs and Ballads’. Boesch’s warm, sensuously attractive baritone voice, first-rate diction and remarkable acting ability were ...» More

'This would have been a massive project for even the biggest international label, but from a small independent … it is a miracle. An ideal Christ ...'Please give me the complete Hyperion Schubert songs set – all 40 discs –and, in the next life, I promise I'll "re-gift" it to Schubert himself … ...» More

How clearly the moon’s light speaks to me, inspiring me on my journey: ‘Follow faithfully the old track, choose nowhere as your home, lest bad times bring endless cares. You will move on, and go forth to other places, lightly casting off all grief.’

Thus, with gentle ebb and swelling flow deep within my soul, I walk on in the darkness. I climb boldly, singing merrily, and the world seems good to me. I see all things clearly in their gentle reflection. Nothing is blurred or withered in the heat of the day: there is joy all around, yet I am alone.

In contrast to Schmidt’s lone, melancholic figure, the protagonist of Friedrich von Schlegel’s Der Wanderer (1819) is cheerfully reconciled to his fate, like the Vagabond in Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel. From Schlegel’s oddly shaped verses Schubert creates a gently hypnotic nocturne, at once serene and restless, with an accompaniment that, as so often in his songs, suggests a string trio or quartet. In an inspired variation on the basic strophic plan, the vocal melody remains virtually identical for the second verse while the piano textures and harmonies are subtly altered in response to the new text.

How clearly the moon’s light speaks to me, inspiring me on my journey: ‘Follow faithfully the old track, choose nowhere as your home, lest bad times bring endless cares. You will move on, and go forth to other places, lightly casting off all grief.’

Thus, with gentle ebb and swelling flow deep within my soul, I walk on in the darkness. I climb boldly, singing merrily, and the world seems good to me. I see all things clearly in their gentle reflection. Nothing is blurred or withered in the heat of the day: there is joy all around, yet I am alone.